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[Co0kieL0rd]

Hello and good evening, folks. I had this idea for a Victory card that yields VPs according to the amount of Curses in your deck. I'm probably not the first with such an idea. However, its reaction ability, which allows you to gain a Curse when another player does, should give it a somewhat unique character.

Name:      Cursed Manor
Type:      Victory/ Reaction
Cost:      5
Supply:      8 (2 players) or 12 (3 or more players)
Text:      This card is worth 1 VP per Curse in your deck, but no more than 10 VPs. | When another player gains a card from the supply costing 0, you may discard this from your hand. If you do, gain a copy of that card.

Clarifications

• Curses still count as -1 VP
• The reaction effect works for Coppers and Ruins, too. If you desire these cards, you may gain them with Cursed Manor
• You cannot gain Spoils, Madmen or Mercenaries with this, since they are not in the supply
• If another player gains a card whose cost has been reduced to 0 due to Bridges or Highways being in play, you may use the reaction to gain a copy of it. Similar applies for Peddler.

With the limit of 10 VPs per copy Cursed Manor, one player cannot have more than 70 VPs in a two-player game or 110 VPs in a game with three or more players, respectively, with CM and Curses alone. This is still a huge amount so every player should try to get as many Manors as possible so as not to allow one player to amass too many VPs. However, the VP limit prevents players from benefitting from having more than 10 Curses in their deck (each additional Curse will reduce VPs by 1).

Regardless of the amount of players, if you have less than 4 Cursed Manors, each Curse you gain (up to 10) increases your total VPs by 2 at best, so this is strictly worse than buying Duchies straight ahead. If you have exactly 4 Cursed Manors, each Curse increases your VPs by 3. That’s still worse than Duchies because the latter require that you have fewer total cards in your deck. With 5 CMs, each Curse is worth 4 VPs. With 6 CMs, each Curse is worth 5 VPs, etc.

I playtested this in different kingdoms while forcing at least one player to go after Manors and Curses rather than Provinces or Duchies. With a rush strategy and +buys or strong gainers, that player would always win with a huge lead. It is important not to let one player get all the Cursed Manors. With fewer than 6 CMs, a player has virtually no advantage without other green cards. If there's no +buy available, Big Money ad Provinces is usually better. If players are forced into a slog, CMs and Curses could be the sheet anchor.

Synergies
•   +Buy
•   Gainers, especially Altar
•   Remodel and similar cards
•   Cursers
•   Strong card drawers
•   Sifters
•   Island, Native Village to set aside cards

Antisynergies
•   Strong trashing
•   Trashing attacks, including Swindler which will hit Curses frequently and turn them into Copper
•   Handsize reduction attacks (?)
•   Duke, esp. with few players, can acquire more VPs through fewer cards and cost-collides with Cursed Manor

I would like to hear some opinions on this card. Regarding cost, functionality, its situational usefulness. What do you think?

[silverspawn]

let me quote Donald X:

Counting treasures seems too much like Gardens. It's different, if there were dozens of expansions I would do it at some point and not feel bad about it, but man, it's unexciting. Counting attacks or reactions or some other type only works if the card ensures the type is out ala Young Witch or by being the type, and then it's too likely to just be counting itself; I tried a card that just counted copies of itself, it didn't work but turned into Duke. Counting Curses is really a non-starter. You could count Estates; that's one of the better ideas I'm listing in this essay, but again I am going to use that word "unexciting;" I already have Silk Road. It seems silly to count Provinces or Golds, although I tried a prize VP card that counted Golds. Counting Coppers again seems too much like Gardens though it isn't identical or anything. Like, for any card, that card is in a set instead of some other card. A VP card that counts Coppers or treasures is in a set instead of whatever else. They may not have nonzero merit, but whatever else is probably better. People think of adding up the total value of your treasures, and I playtested such a card, but treasures worth varying values kind of put the kibosh on that.

Now, he didn't say why it was bad, and who knows, maybe he's wrong, but I think I can guess why. Either it's so weak that it's only good when someone else is cursing you, or it's so strong that it makes players not play cursers in the first place. there really is no in between. in your case, I think it's the latter. So, it completely kills witch and soothsayer and sea hag and familiar and mountebank torturer... not good. why even use curses? you could just aswell create a new pile of cards for 0$ that don't do anything and can't be gained other than with Cursed Manor and through buy, and it would work almost identically, except that it's a little bit stronger. so the card just says: gain this card, then i'll be worth something. not exciting...

So, sorry to nuke your idea, but I think this is a dead end.

[eHalcyon]

Definitely not the first to suggest this.  I don't think the reaction solves the problems inherent in a curse-counting card.

One problem is that it completely negates the VP impact of curses.  In fact, it turns those curses into a positive.  A single Cursed Manor is enough to negate the -VP of pretty much all the curses that could be in your deck.  Any subsequent CMs can be worth a significant amount -- potentially more than even a Province.  Suddenly, powerful attacks are completely neutered.

A second problem is that it is pretty much a twisted version of Duke which, I think, ends up less balanced.  It is exactly Duke except that it counts Curse instead of Duchy.  This actually gives the card more potential than Duke, because there are always more Curses than Duchies in the game.  Yes, Duchy is worth 4 more points than Curse, but Curse costs $0.  That's significant.  The potential of CM still surpasses Province by far.  Games with CM will often start with a race to win the Curse split without completely tanking your ability to pick up CMs later.  Contesting Curses is easy because they cost nothing, so the actual win will be decided largely by first player advantage and shuffle luck (e.g. playing your Squire first).

Even if the card works, it doesn't really add anything that isn't already covered by Duke.  This is OK with some cards (like the many variations of Village) but I'm looking for something more unique when it comes to alt VP.

All this said, if you like the concept, don't let this criticism deter you from testing it yourself.  And definitely keep posting new ideas if you have them.

[Co0kieL0rd]

So, it completely kills witch and soothsayer and sea hag and familiar and mountebank torturer... not good. why even use curses? you could just aswell create a new pile of cards for 0$ that don't do anything and can't be gained other than with Cursed Manor and through buy, and it would work almost identically, except that it's a little bit stronger. so the card just says: gain this card, then i'll be worth something. not exciting...

One problem is that it completely negates the VP impact of curses.  In fact, it turns those curses into a positive.  A single Cursed Manor is enough to negate the -VP of pretty much all the curses that could be in your deck.  Any subsequent CMs can be worth a significant amount -- potentially more than even a Province.  Suddenly, powerful attacks are completely neutered.

I don't see it as a big problem that cursing attacks are neutered. Other reaction cards can do that as well. In a game with Altar, I probably wouldn't bother with a Witch, either, so as not to give them fuel for their gainer. I know in the case of Cursed Manor cursers actually help the attacked player, but only if he has CMs or can gain them. And even then they can help the attacker even better if he won the CM split and can discard CMs from his hand as a reaction to the other player gaining a Curse.
Trashing attacks still hurt and are potentially even stronger if they hit a Cursed Manor of a player with many CMs and Curses in his deck because he loses a lot of points. I don't see that as a problem, rather something to keep in mind when such attacks are in the kingdom.

A second problem is that it is pretty much a twisted version of Duke which, I think, ends up less balanced.  It is exactly Duke except that it counts Curse instead of Duchy.  This actually gives the card more potential than Duke, because there are always more Curses than Duchies in the game.  Yes, Duchy is worth 4 more points than Curse, but Curse costs $0.  That's significant.  The potential of CM still surpasses Province by far.  Games with CM will often start with a race to win the Curse split without completely tanking your ability to pick up CMs later.  Contesting Curses is easy because they cost nothing, so the actual win will be decided largely by first player advantage and shuffle luck (e.g. playing your Squire first).

Even if the card works, it doesn't really add anything that isn't already covered by Duke.  This is OK with some cards (like the many variations of Village) but I'm looking for something more unique when it comes to alt VP.

I know it anti-synergizes with Duke. I pointed that out in my initial post. But that's only one card. What distinguishes Cursed Manor from Duke, in my opinion, is its higher speed and strong focus on +buys. Like Fool’s Gold, the Manors pile will run out very quickly once a player has got the first one because you cannot let him have too many of it. This made things interesting for me. But I can clearly see why other people would not like the whole idea. It's a matter of taste and which strategies one prefers - like Saboteur (which is a very good counter to CM-rushes, btw).
It may be not that exciting to some, but it's certainly more exciting than Great Hall or Gardens (which it synergizes with).

Anyway, thank you for sharing your thoughts and opinions!

[Awaclus]

In a game with Altar, I probably wouldn't bother with a Witch

You should.

[Co0kieL0rd]

In a game with Altar, I probably wouldn't bother with a Witch

You should.

Okay. I probably would. I couldn't come up with a better example.

[Nic]

How about capping the VP at 3 or 4, but buffing it by making the reaction gain cards to hand? Could be nice for those coppers or a few of those Ruins.

[Co0kieL0rd]

How about capping the VP at 3 or 4, but buffing it by making the reaction gain cards to hand? Could be nice for those coppers or a few of those Ruins.

With such a low VP cap, no one would buy the card. It would never be better than Duchy so it should rather cost $3 or $4 then. It would just negate the -1 VP of Curses with a little extra points. But you'd rather buy a Silver instead and trash or ignore the Curses.
Concerning your second suggestion, the reaction is not primarily gain Coppers or Ruins, so I considered the implied hand size reduction a more valuable defense against certain attacks such as Minion or Ghost Ship.

[eHalcyon]

Trashing attacks still hurt and are potentially even stronger if they hit a Cursed Manor of a player with many CMs and Curses in his deck because he loses a lot of points. I don't see that as a problem, rather something to keep in mind when such attacks are in the kingdom.

No reaction card completely neuters curses.  They can slow them down, but they don't neuter them.  You'll almost never have enough reaction cards in your deck to completely stop every attack, and if you do then that was a huge opportunity cost you paid and the attack STILL helped the attacker because it forced you to build your deck differently.  CM is different in that it completely reverses the attack.  The junking that is supposed to help you now HELPS you instead.  You don't even need to get CM until late game so it doesn't even slow down your early/mid-game deck building.  In other words, CM is an absolute counter to cursing attacks, whereas other cards are unreliable checks at best.

Your example about how the attack can help the attacker after winning the CM split doesn't work.  If you've got more CMs, you'll probably want as many of the Curses as you can get, in which case you don't want to be handing them out to others.  The card is weird that way.  I also would not expect it to be strategically sound to try to win the CM split before the Curses are gone, given how expensive they are relative to the Curses.  Curses are far easier to contest and would disappear far more quickly.

As for Duke, I was not saying that it anti-synergizes.  Rather, I'm saying that it covers largely the same design space.




I have two suggestions which might help address the issues I bring up.

First, increase the cost to $6.  Duchy/Duke is viable pretty often even though the targets are $5/$5.  With CM, the targets are $0/$5 which is far, far easier to achieve.  Increasing the cost of CM at least makes it less trivial.  In cases where Duke is viable, the same support would be more than enough for CM at $5.  But if you increase it to $6, then it requires different support.  Horse Traders is amazing for reaching $5 and is thus perfect for Duke.  But HT is not so good for hitting $6.

This change thus helps differentiate it from Duke a bit.  It also changes how a player would approach the card.  At $5, I can see going for Curses first.  At $6, you've got to worry about being able to afford CMs at all.  It requires more forethought and strategy to make it work.

$6 is also makes it slightly more of an investment when it comes to countering curses.

The second change is to either reduce the VP ratio or, as Nic suggested, put a cap on its value.  The purpose is to make it so that a single CM doesn't (or is less likely to) counter the Curses thrown at you.  That should help make it so that cursing attacks aren't just written off entirely.

I'm still not convinced that these changes would make CM a good card, but I think it would at least be more interesting.

How about capping the VP at 3 or 4, but buffing it by making the reaction gain cards to hand? Could be nice for those coppers or a few of those Ruins.

With such a low VP cap, no one would buy the card. It would never be better than Duchy so it should rather cost $3 or $4 then. It would just negate the -1 VP of Curses with a little extra points. But you'd rather buy a Silver instead and trash or ignore the Curses.
Concerning your second suggestion, the reaction is not primarily gain Coppers or Ruins, so I considered the implied hand size reduction a more valuable defense against certain attacks such as Minion or Ghost Ship.

Raise the cap then?  At 5, it CAN be more valuable than Duchy.

Not sure what you mean by "implied hand size reduction".

[ashersky]

I will say I like the Smuggler-like reaction bit of this card, just as a mechanic.

[scott_pilgrim]

Silverspawn actually summarized the problem with this kind of card pretty well.  With CM on the board, either Curses are good, or they're bad.  If Curses are good, now we have a $0 good card, which is nuts, and cursing attacks are completely countered.  If Curses are bad, then you'll never buy them intentionally, meaning you'll never go for CM unless you are receiving Curses from a cursing attack (and even then you may be trying to trash them); in other words, CM will be a dead card on a huge number of boards.  So no matter how you adjust the numbers (price and point ratio) you still have one of these two problems.

Now, you can try to change the card to fix these problems.  I'm thinking something like:

Cursed Manor - $5
Victory-Action-Attack
Each other player gains a Curse.
---
Worth 1 VP per Curse in your deck.

This fixes the second problem, by ensuring that whenever it is available, a Cursing attack is also available.  Unfortunately, this card looks like it would be way too dominating (even if the VP ratio is lowered).  Since it is its own counter, if it is ever worth getting for one player, both players must spiral into getting as many of them as they can; the second player gets one to score points off the curses he is receiving, so now the first is getting hit by curses and must grab more, causing the second to grab more, etc.

Your reaction doesn't fix either of the problems, and in fact if anything it makes the first one worse.  By potentially making curses even more accessible than they already are, you just add a new way to gain what may be a good card, with what is already a good card.  And it doesn't do anything in the second case.

I'm not saying there isn't a good fix for these problems, but if there is I haven't come up with it and I don't think anyone at f.ds has come up with it (that is, I have yet to see the "make curses good" concept done well that I can recall).  That's not to say don't keep trying, I'm just saying it's a difficult problem.

[ashersky]

The second change is to either reduce the VP ratio or, as Nic suggested, put a cap on its value.  The purpose is to make it so that a single CM doesn't (or is less likely to) counter the Curses thrown at you.  That should help make it so that cursing attacks aren't just written off entirely.

I feel like the easiest way to do that is:

"Worth 1 VP for every 2 Curses in your deck, rounded down."

Doesn't fix anything, but it's at least consistent with other such cards.

[Co0kieL0rd]

Your example about how the attack can help the attacker after winning the CM split doesn't work.  If you've got more CMs, you'll probably want as many of the Curses as you can get, in which case you don't want to be handing them out to others.  The card is weird that way.  I also would not expect it to be strategically sound to try to win the CM split before the Curses are gone, given how expensive they are relative to the Curses.  Curses are far easier to contest and would disappear far more quickly.

Did no one notice that Cursed Manor already has a VP cap implied? It's set to 10 currently, which may be a bit high. But it ensures that with more than 10 Curses in the kingdom (in games with more than 2 players), every other Curse more than 10 in your deck would decrease your VPs again, so you might as well curse-attack other players if you already have 10 Curses and the bigger part of the CMs.
So Curse attacks aren't completely neutered - the more Curses are out, the less Cursed Manor can counter all of them. I might decrease the VP cap to 8 or 6 to make the counter even weaker.

First, increase the cost to $6.  Duchy/Duke is viable pretty often even though the targets are $5/$5.  With CM, the targets are $0/$5 which is far, far easier to achieve.  Increasing the cost of CM at least makes it less trivial.  In cases where Duke is viable, the same support would be more than enough for CM at $5.  But if you increase it to $6, then it requires different support.  Horse Traders is amazing for reaching $5 and is thus perfect for Duke.  But HT is not so good for hitting $6.

This change thus helps differentiate it from Duke a bit.  It also changes how a player would approach the card.  At $5, I can see going for Curses first.  At $6, you've got to worry about being able to afford CMs at all.  It requires more forethought and strategy to make it work.

$6 is also makes it slightly more of an investment when it comes to countering curses.

The second change is to either reduce the VP ratio or, as Nic suggested, put a cap on its value.  The purpose is to make it so that a single CM doesn't (or is less likely to) counter the Curses thrown at you.  That should help make it so that cursing attacks aren't just written off entirely.

I will try both out separately, but I would probably prefer a lower VP cap than 10 but keep the price at $5. Both would make the card too weak, I think... or not? I will see.

Not sure what you mean by "implied hand size reduction".

I meant that when you use CM's reaction, you discard it from your hand, thus decreasing your hand size by 1, making you immune to attacks like Minion or Pillage.

Now, you can try to change the card to fix these problems.  I'm thinking something like:

Cursed Manor - $5
Victory-Action-Attack
Each other player gains a Curse.
---
Worth 1 VP per Curse in your deck.

This fixes the second problem, by ensuring that whenever it is available, a Cursing attack is also available.  Unfortunately, this card looks like it would be way too dominating (even if the VP ratio is lowered).  Since it is its own counter, if it is ever worth getting for one player, both players must spiral into getting as many of them as they can; the second player gets one to score points off the curses he is receiving, so now the first is getting hit by curses and must grab more, causing the second to grab more, etc.

The reaction ability of CM implies that another player gains a Curse before you. I don't see the point in cursing others with a card that is worth VPs for Curses in your deck if it doesn't have that reaction part where it would also gain a Curse. No one would use such an attack, because the other players would just have to buy 2 of these cards to neuter it.

[scott_pilgrim]

Now, you can try to change the card to fix these problems.  I'm thinking something like:

Cursed Manor - $5
Victory-Action-Attack
Each other player gains a Curse.
---
Worth 1 VP per Curse in your deck.

This fixes the second problem, by ensuring that whenever it is available, a Cursing attack is also available.  Unfortunately, this card looks like it would be way too dominating (even if the VP ratio is lowered).  Since it is its own counter, if it is ever worth getting for one player, both players must spiral into getting as many of them as they can; the second player gets one to score points off the curses he is receiving, so now the first is getting hit by curses and must grab more, causing the second to grab more, etc.

The reaction ability of CM implies that another player gains a Curse before you. I don't see the point in cursing others with a card that is worth VPs for Curses in your deck if it doesn't have that reaction part where it would also gain a Curse. No one would use such an attack, because the other players would just have to buy 2 of these cards to neuter it.

...And then you buy more of them to neuter their attack, and everyone just gets as many of them as they can.  That's why I said it was a bad idea.

Curses are free anyway.  My point was that if this card is so strong that you actually want Curses, you don't need to make them any easier to get; they're already free.  So ideally, to implement the concept of "card that makes Curses less bad", you would make it not so strong as to make Curses actually a good thing.  The problem with that is that the card is dead whenever there is no cursing attack on the board.  The solution to that problem is to make the card itself be a cursing attack.  And then, as I mentioned, the card is still problematic because as soon as one player gets one, everyone has to get as many of them as they can.

So I think you seem to be stuck on assuming that you want a card that actually makes Curses good.  Can I ask why you would want a card like that?  Everyone will just rush to get as many Curses as they can as quickly as possible, which is a very trivial task that takes almost no skill, meaning it will only increase the impact of shuffle luck/first player advantage; and even worse, that task will play out in exactly the same way regardless of the rest of the board.  (Okay, +buy will slightly change it but that's very easy to optimize.)  People don't like Rebuild because it makes every game the same.  I can't imagine Cursed Manor being any better.

Actually, you even acknowledge that your card is brokenly strong right here:

every player should try to get as many Manors as possible so as not to allow one player to amass too many VPs.

Why would you want a card like this?  Especially given that the "strategy" it promotes is un-fun and nearly identical in every game in which you go for it.

[Co0kieL0rd]

Curses are free anyway.  My point was that if this card is so strong that you actually want Curses, you don't need to make them any easier to get; they're already free.  So ideally, to implement the concept of "card that makes Curses less bad", you would make it not so strong as to make Curses actually a good thing.  The problem with that is that the card is dead whenever there is no cursing attack on the board. The solution to that problem is to make the card itself be a cursing attack.  And then, as I mentioned, the card is still problematic because as soon as one player gets one, everyone has to get as many of them as they can.

So I think you seem to be stuck on assuming that you want a card that actually makes Curses good.  Can I ask why you would want a card like that?  Everyone will just rush to get as many Curses as they can as quickly as possible, which is a very trivial task that takes almost no skill, meaning it will only increase the impact of shuffle luck/first player advantage; and even worse, that task will play out in exactly the same way regardless of the rest of the board.  (Okay, +buy will slightly change it but that's very easy to optimize.)  People don't like Rebuild because it makes every game the same.  I can't imagine Cursed Manor being any better.

Actually, you even acknowledge that your card is brokenly strong right here:

every player should try to get as many Manors as possible so as not to allow one player to amass too many VPs.

Why would you want a card like this?  Especially given that the "strategy" it promotes is un-fun and nearly identical in every game in which you go for it.

Maybe I would come to the same conclusion, eventually. I just tested it for functionality, not yet for fun. I thought it might be interesting if all players have to run for a certain card as fast as possible (not for Curses but for Cursed Manor). But you're right in that it would require neither skill nor any particular synergy card (other than any source of +buy or a gainer), so - like Rebuild - it offers no variety or space for strategy. But hey, it was my first card idea and working on the concept helped me better understand what features to implement in a certain card and how to adjust its cost accordingly. Finding out whether a card is ultimately fun and interesting or broken required that I shared the idea with the community. So thanks for your feedback!

ashersky called attention to the "Smuggler-like reaction" of Cursed Manor, which is a cute concept I will probably implement in some other card.